State Sen. Jake Corman met with Perry County residents over breakfast at the Ranch House restaurant on April 2.

Several residents told Corman they were frustrated by property taxes. “Nobody likes the property tax. We hate it,” Corman replied, but he said he’d prefer that changes to it be made through voter referendum.

“I don’t think that’s something that Harrisburg should implement on voters,” he said, noting that if the property tax was eliminated, funding for schools would need to be raised at the state level, resulting in a loss of local control.

Corman also responded to questions on some of the hot button issues from Governor Corbett’s 2013 budget proposal, such as changes to the Pennsylvania Lottery. Critics have scorned the lottery plan for privatizing a working system and for handing control to a foreign company.

Corman said the governor’s plan is not to privatize the lottery but to “have a private firm manage our lottery.” He said he wasn’t holding the meeting to advocate for the plan but that in a recession “we have to be creative.”

That message applied to other topics raised in the discussion, such as the state Department of Health’s (DOH) plan to close roughly half its state-run health centers, including the one in Newport. Corman said that DOH reports show that many of the health centers get limited traffic.

He said the DOH could provide more access by eliminating overhead costs and instead offering services such as immunizations and health screenings at local events or on planned dates at the courthouse.

Shelley Dreyer of the Perry County Family Center voiced concern about that promise. “It sounds great, but are they going to let that continue in Perry?” She said the Newport center used to give many shots at the senior expo but the DOH halted that service a year ago.

“That’s why I’m concerned about the residents of Perry. I don’t want us to lose (the health center) and we have to travel to Juniata or Cumberland.”

Corman said the state senate is reviewing the DOH plan. “In theory it seems to work for me, what they’re saying, but before we approve it we want to vet it completely,” he said.

The morning ended with a question Corman couldn’t have left Perry County without answering: what’s your response to Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson’s “scumbag” comment? “I don’t know what inspired such a ridiculous comment,” Corman said. He added that Thompson should have come to Perry County to apologize directly, not through a spokesperson.

Corman has represented the 34th district in the state senate since 1999. His current term expires next year. “I have one more in me,” he said, but ultimately he will decide with his wife and children whether to run again. Corman’s New Bloomfield office was recently closed to cut costs.